


Voice on the Wind

by lea_hazel



Category: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: Background Het, Backstory, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Friendship, Male Friendship, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, War, Yuletide 2020, emotional resilience in the face of adversity, what if platonic and romantic relationships were equally important and everyone was okay with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28090092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lea_hazel/pseuds/lea_hazel
Summary: Gurjin and Rian: before, during, and after.
Relationships: Gurjin & Rian (Dark Crystal), Mira/Rian (Dark Crystal)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 17
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Voice on the Wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [boywonder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boywonder/gifts).



There was something odd about being the third friend in a group of three, especially when that group included a Stonewood and a Vapran. Well, not Rian, maybe. There were more Stonewoods in the Castle Guard than any other clan, and his father had been a guard before him. Besides, Rian was as stubborn as any Stonewood who ever lived, and once he decided to befriend you, you were _going_ to be his friend. That was all well and good for a Drenchen like Gurjin, far from his home and his family, isolated among strangers. He glad to have Rian as his friend, the first friend he made after leaving Sog to come to the castle.

When Rian told him that he was planning on approaching the new Vapran guard, Gurjin couldn't believe his ears. Rian was well-liked among the guards, and he had many friends already. Surely he couldn't be so desperate as to throw himself at a Vapran and beg for her affection. The Vaprans were so cold and aloof, so high and mighty, and they thought themselves better than the other clans. Everyone knew that. Everyone except Rian, it seemed. He was determined to befriend Mira, and if to judge from the starry-eyed way he talked about her beauty, friendship was just one of the things on his mind.

It turned out that if anything, Gurjin had underestimated Rian's stubbornness. In no time at all, he and Mira were cavorting around the castle together like mischievous childlings. They spent all their free hours together, planning infuriating pranks and chasing every creature on wing or leg that could be called prey. Rian always invited Gurjin to join them, and sometimes he accepted. One day, he asked him directly whether he wouldn't rather be alone with Mira, and Rian laughed.

"Of course not!" he declared confidently. "Mira and I will have trines and trines together. All three of us will. When you love someone, that makes all the loves you already have even stronger. Besides, you know Mira likes you. Isn't it better to have two friends than one?"

Gurjin reluctantly agreed that yes, it was better.

* * *

There's nothing odd about being a group of three friends when two of your friends are in love with each other. When Rian first told Mira that he loved her, he said it almost as easily as when he said the same to Gurjin, almost daily. He'd promised that their friendship would only grow stronger from including Mira in it and, improbably, he was right. The closer Mira and Rian grew, and the likelier it seemed to everyone who knew them that they _would_ be spending their life together, the more natural it was for Gurjin to believe that he would be part of that life, too. As Rian's friend, and now as Mira's, too.

It was a good future to look forward to, the kind of future Gurjin had always secretly hoped for. Nothing would ever be exactly _peaceful_ with someone as lively as Mira, and Gurjin liked his quiet. But all of his tomorrows would look like his todays, only more so, and that was all that he had ever dared to hope for. It was strange to think that it was Mira who brought all this about. She was the sort of Gelfling that he'd never have befriended if left to his own devices. Her high spirits and radiant vitality were enough to have put him off.

Luckily for him, he had Rian to drag him kicking and screaming into a friendship that, he eventually reluctantly admitted, had done him nothing but good. Even his sister Naia had noticed the change in him, and she had known him longer than anyone.

"I wasn't sure if this Rian would be a good influence on you," she said to him one morning, as though she were a wise elder, rather than being exactly the same age as him.

"Oh, weren't you?" he asked. "I don't remember you ever mentioning that."

"That's because I never told you, silly," said Naia.

Gurjin frowned. "Why's that?"

"What good would it have done?" said Naia with a shrug of her shoulders. "If I'd told you I didn't like him, it would only have made you even more determined to pursue the friendship, and then you would have resented me for disliking your close friend. You're as stubborn as a great old boulder. You'd have done it just to spite me."

"Me?" asked Gurjin incredulously. "I'm not stubborn."

"Yes, you are," said his sister with infuriating self-assurance. "Stubborn and contrary. You always have to do exactly the opposite of what you're told."

"That's--" he said, stumbling at a loss for words. "That's ridiculous."

"It's all right," said Naia cheerfully. "I wouldn't change you for all of Thra."

"Oh, thanks for that," he muttered in response.

"And it's for the best, really," she went on. "The both of you are so stone-headed that Mother and I can rest assured that you won't go along with any old nonsense that gossamer-winged Vapran girl comes up with, just because she says _jump_."

"Mira's not like that," he objected. "She's not like we always thought Vaprans would be. She doesn't order us around or try to act all lady-like. She's just a guard, like any other guard in the castle."

"She's just a guard, hmm?" said Naia, imitating an intonation that he didn't know where she'd heard. "Then why do you always end up doing what she wants to do?"

"We don't," said Gurjin, "and if we do, it's only because she was the first one to suggest anything. I won't go along with everything she says. Some of the pranks she and Rian get up to are just--"

"That's what I said exactly," replied Naia patiently. "You won't do anything that doesn't seem right to you, no matter how much Mira insists. That's why I'm thankful for your stubbornness, infuriating though it sometimes is. I know it'll keep you out of trouble."

"Well, I don't want trouble," he grumbled.

"If you don't go looking for it, then you won't find it," said Naia, "and that's that."

* * *

It's odd being two, again.

Trouble had found Gurjin, even though he hadn't gone looking for it. It had even started with Mira, although she wasn't to blame. If Mira had done as she was told, who knew how much longer it would have taken them to learn the truth about the Skeksis, and the Crystal of Truth, and all the rest of it? And now that he so badly wanted to thank her, just for being herself and doing what she did best, she was gone. Just like that.

Just like that, it was the two of them again. And Rian would never be the same.

It was two days after the battle that he went looking for Rian and found him sitting alone in the upper branches of an old tree.

When he's finally made the climb up, Rian said, "I hope you've come with something other than your usual doom and gloom, Gurjin. I don't think I can stomach it, right now."

"Usually we'd have had Mira to balance it out," Gurjin pointed out.

"Yes," said Rian. "We did."

Gurjin plopped himself down beside him, causing the branch to groan and shudder from their combined weight. "Have you tried talking to Deet?" he suggested. "Nothing gets that Gelfling down. I'll bet she can give you an inspired perspective on this resistance you've started."

" _I've_ started?" said Rian, bumping his shoulder. "It's not like I did it alone."

"That's right," agreed Gurjin. "You've never been able to get into trouble alone, have you?"

"And a fine bit of trouble it is, too," said Rian. "I think Mira would approve. I just wish she was here to see it."

"So do I, Rian," replied Gurjin, "but remember, you still have me."

"We still have each other," agreed Rian.

"You have me," said Gurjin, bumping him with his elbow, " _and_ Brea."

"And Deet," added Rian, his face taking on that stubborn expression that Gurjin knew all too well.

"And Hup?" suggested Gurjin.

Rian laughed out loud, a sudden and joyous sound that he'd missed more than even he knew. "And Hup! Why not? And, come to think of it, what about your Silk Spitter friend from before?"

Gurjin elbowed him a little harder than before, but Rian only laughed, and Gurjin couldn't help but join him. He never could.

"We have to be brave, now," said Rian soberly, once their fit of laughter had calmed.

"Yeah, but we don't have to be brave alone," Gurjin reminded him. "Admit it, isn't it better to have four friends than two?"

Rian smiled and agreed that yes, it was better.


End file.
